Pulling Toward or Pulling Away: Deliberation, Disagreement, and Opinion Extremity in Political Participation n Magdalena Wojcieszak, IE University Objective. Evidence supports two somewhat contradictory notions: deliberation is to encourage engagement, but disagreement may decrease participation. This study aims to provide a common denominator in the debate. It distinguishes between deliberation and political disagreement that emerges during deliberation to test which factors advance or thwart participatory goals. This study also accounts for opinion extremity, which may moderate the tested relationships. Methods. This study draws on quasi-experimental data from participants in structured, moderated, and heterogeneous face-to-face deliberations on sexual minority rights in Poland (N 5 181). Results. Relative to the pretest, deliberation discouraged moderates from active engagement and pulled them away from communicative participation. As predicted, extreme participants who perceived high disagreement intended to be more active than their counterparts in like-minded groups. Conclusions. Research on deliberative versus participatory democracy should differentiate between deliberation and political disagreement as well as account for individual characteristics that affect responses to deliberation and disagreement. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. The debate on deliberative versus participatory democracy has been receiving increased attention from communications scholars and political scientists alike (e.g., Mutz, 2006; McClurg, 2006a, 2006b). It is thus a platitude to say that some researchers see deliberation as a panacea to citizens’ political apathy, a panacea that will increase interest, knowledge, information seeking, and ultimately pull citizens into the democratic process (Fishkin, 1995). It is also widely known that other researchers argue that deliberation and participation may be mutually exclusive because encoun- tering opposing views may increase ambivalence, issue complexity, and/or entail negative interpersonal consequences that turn citizens away from politics (Mutz, 2006). Both views remain prevalent and each has its merits. At the same time, studies that inform this debate conceptualize deliberation and political disagreement in several distinct ways (see Scheufele et al., 2006). n Direct correspondence to Magdalena Wojcieszak, IE University, Cardenal Zu ´n ˜iga, 12, 40003 Segovia, Spain h magdalena.wojcieszak@ie.edu i . The author thanks Dr. Michael Delli Carpini, Dr. Vincent Price, and Dr. Michael Hennessy from the Annenberg School for Communication as well as Konrad Maj and a research team from the Warsaw School of Social Psychology. The author will share data and coding with those wishing to replicate the work presented here. SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 92, Number 1, March 2011 r 2011 by the Southwestern Social Science Association